Twisted: The Collected Stories (39 page)

Dalton thanked him, then he looked at his watch, took out his mobile phone and called his office to say he’d have to miss his office Christmas party. He explained that the police were looking into his ex-wife’s disappearance and he was with his daughter at the moment. He wasn’t going to leave the girl alone.

Carly hugged him. “Thanks, Dad.” Her eyes lifted to the window, staring at the swirling snow. A long
moment passed. Carly glanced at the others in the room and turned toward her father. In a soft voice she said, “I always wondered what would have happened if you and Mom hadn’t broken up.”

Dalton laughed, ran his hand through his hair, mussing it further. “I’ve thought about that too.”

Sachs glanced at Rhyme and they turned away, letting the father and daughter continue talking in relative privacy.

“The guys Mom’s dated? They were okay. But nobody special. None of them lasted very long.”

“It’s tough to meet the right person,” Dalton said.

“I guess . . . ”

“What?”

“I guess I’ve always wished you’d get back together.”

Dalton seemed at a loss for words. “I tried. You know that. But your mom was in a different place.”

“But you stopped trying a couple of years ago.”

“I could read the writing on the wall. People have to move on.”

“But she misses you. I know she does.”

Dalton laughed, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“No, no, really. When I ask her about you, she tells me what a cool guy you were. You were funny. She said you made her laugh.”

“We had some good times.”

Carly said, “When I asked Mom what happened between you, she said it wasn’t anything totally terrible.”

“True,” Dalton said, sipping his coffee. “We just didn’t know how to be husband and wife back then. We got married too young.”

“Well, you’re not young anymore. . . .” Carly blushed. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

But Dalton said, “No, you’re right. I’ve grown up a lot since then.”

“And Mom’s really changed. She used to be so quiet, you know. Just no fun. But she’s into all kinds of things now. Camping and hiking, rafting, all that out-of-doors stuff.”

“Really?” Dalton asked. “I never pictured her going in for that kind of thing.”

Carly looked off for a moment. “Remember those business trips you’d take when I was a kid? You’d go to Hong Kong or Japan?”

“Setting up our overseas offices, sure.”

“I wanted all of us to go. You, Mom and me . . .” She played with her coffee cup. “But she was always like, ‘Oh, there’s too much to do at home.’ Or, ‘Oh, we’ll get sick if we drink the water,’ or whatever. We never did take a family vacation. Not a real one.”

“I always wanted that too.” Dalton shook his head sadly. “And I’d get mad when she didn’t want to come along and bring you. But she’s your mother; it’s her job to look out for you. All she wanted was for you to be safe.” He smiled. “I remember once when I was in Tokyo and calling home. And—”

His words were interrupted when Rhyme’s phone rang. He spoke into the microphone on his chair, “Command, answer phone.”

“Detective Rhyme?” the voice clattered through the speaker.

The rank was out of date—a “Ret.” belonged with it—but he said, “Go ahead.”

“This’s Trooper Bronson, New York State Police.”

“Go ahead.”

“We had an emergency vehicle locator request regarding a burgundy Malibu and understand you’re involved in the case.”

“That’s right.”

“We’ve found the vehicle, sir.”

Rhyme heard Carly gasp. Dalton stepped beside the girl and put his arm around her shoulder. What would they hear? That Sue Thompson was dead?

“Go ahead.”

“The car’s moving west, looks like it’s headed for the George Washington Bridge.”

“Occupants?”

“Two. Man and a woman. Can’t tell anything more.”

“Thank God. She’s alive.” Dalton sighed.

Heading toward Jersey, Rhyme reflected. The flats were among the most popular places for dumping bodies in the metro area.

“Registered to a Richard Musgrave, Queens. No warrants.”

Rhyme glanced at Carly, who shook her head, meaning she had no clue who he was.

Sachs leaned forward toward the speaker and identified herself. “Are you near the car?”

“About two hundred feet behind.”

“You in a marked vehicle?”

“That’s right.”

“How far from the bridge?”

“A mile or two east.”

Rhyme glanced at Sachs. “You want to join the party? You can stay right on their tail in the Camaro.”

“You bet.” She ran for the door.

“Sachs,” Rhyme called.

She glanced back.

“You have chains on your Chevy?”

Sachs laughed. “Chains on a muscle car, Rhyme? No.”

“Well, try not to skid into the Hudson, okay? It’s probably pretty cold.”

“I’ll do my best.”

True, a rear-wheel-drive sports car, with more than four hundred eager horses under the hood, was not the best vehicle to drive on snow. But Amelia Sachs had spent much of her youth skidding cars on hot asphalt in illegal races around Brooklyn (and sometimes just because, why not, it’s always a blast to do one-eighties); this little bit of snow meant nothing to her.

She now slipped her Camaro SS onto the expressway and pushed the accelerator down. The wheels spun for only five seconds before they gripped and sped her up to eighty.

“I’m on the bridge, Rhyme,” she called into her headset. “Where are they?”

“About a mile west. Are you—”

The car started to swerve. “Hold on, Rhyme, I’m going sideways.”

She brought the skid under control. “A VW doing fifty in the fast lane. Man, doesn’t that just frost you?”

In another mile she’d caught up to the trooper, keeping back, just out of sight of the Malibu. She
looked past him and saw the car ease into the right lane and signal for an exit.

“Rhyme, can you get me a patch through to the trooper?” she asked.

“Hold on . . .” A long pause. Rhyme’s frustrated voice. “I can never figure out—” He was cut off and she heard two clicks. Then the trooper said, “Detective Sachs?”

“I’m here. Go ahead.”

“Is that you behind me, in that fine red set of wheels?”

“Yep.”

“How do you want to handle this?”

“Who’s driving? The man or the woman?”

“The man.”

She thought for a moment. “Make it seem like a routine traffic stop. Taillight him or something. After he’s on the shoulder I’ll get in front and sandwich him in. You take the passenger side and I’ll get the driver out. We don’t know that he’s armed and we don’t know that he’s not. But the odds are it’s an abduction, so assume he’s got a weapon.”

“Roger that, Detective.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

The Malibu exited. Sachs tried to look through the rear window. She couldn’t see anything through the snow. The burgundy car rolled down the ramp and braked slowly to a stop at a red light. When it turned green the car eased forward through the slush and snow.

The trooper’s voice crackled into her ear. “Detective Sachs, are you ready?”

“Yep. Let’s nail him.”

The light bar on his Police Interceptor Crown Victoria started flashing and he hit the squeal once. The driver of the Malibu looked up into the rearview mirror and the car swerved momentarily. Then it pulled to a stop on the side of road, bleak town houses on the left and reedy marshes on the right.

Sachs punched the accelerator and skidded to a stop in front of the Malibu, blocking it. She was out the door in an instant, pulling her Glock from her holster and jogging fast toward the car.

Forty minutes later a grim Amelia Sachs walked into Rhyme’s town house.

“How bad was it?” Rhyme asked.

“Pretty bad.” She poured herself a double scotch and drank down half the liquor fast. Unusual for her; Amelia Sachs was a sipper.

“Pretty bad,” she repeated.

Sachs was not, however, referring to any bloody shootout in Jersey, but to the embarrassment of what they’d done.

“Tell me.”

Sachs had radioed in from the roadside to tell Rhyme, Carly and Anthony Dalton that Susan was fine. Sachs hadn’t been able to go into the details then, though. Now she explained, “The guy in the car was that man she’s been seeing for the past couple of weeks.” A glance at Carly. “Rich Musgrave, the one you mentioned. It’s his car. He called this morning and they’d made plans to go shopping at the Jersey
outlet malls. Only what happened was, when she went out to get the newspaper this morning she slipped on the ice.”

Dalton nodded. “The front path—it’s like a ski slope.”

Carly winced. “Mom always said that she was a born klutz.”

Sachs continued, “She hurt her knee and didn’t want to drive. So she called Rich back and asked him to pick her up. Oh, the spot in the snow where I thought somebody was looking in the window? It was where she fell.”

“That’s why he was so close to her,” Rhyme mused. “He was helping her walk.”

Sachs nodded. “And at the bank, there was no mystery—she really did need something out of the safe deposit box. And the thousand bucks was for Christmas shopping.”

Carly frowned. “But she knew I was coming by. Why didn’t she call me?”

“Oh, she wrote you a note.”

“Note?”

“It said she’d be out for the day but she’d be back home by six.”

“No! . . . But I never saw it.”

“Because,” Sachs explained, “after she fell she was pretty shaken up and forgot to leave it on the entryway table like she’d planned. She found it in her purse when I told her it wasn’t there. And she didn’t have her cell phone turned on.”

Dalton laughed. “All a misunderstanding.” He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders.

Carly, blushing again, said, “I’m really, really
sorry I panicked. I should’ve known there was an explanation.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Sachs said.

Which wasn’t exactly true, Rhyme reflected sourly. No good deed . . .

As she pulled on her coat, Carly invited Rhyme, Sachs and Thom to the Christmas party tomorrow afternoon at her mother’s. “It’s the least we can do.”

“I’m sure Thom and Amelia would be
delighted
to go,” Rhyme said quickly. “Unfortunately, I think I have plans.” Cocktail parties bored him.

“No,” Thom said. “You don’t have any plans.”

Sachs added, “Nope, no plans.”

A scowl from Rhyme. “I think I know my calendar better than anyone else.”

Which wasn’t exactly true either.

After the father and daughter had gone, Rhyme said to Thom, “Since you blew the whistle on my unencumbered social schedule tomorrow, you can do penance.”

“What?” the aide asked cautiously.

“Take the goddamn decorations off my chair. I feel like Santa Claus.”

“Humbug,” Thom said and did as asked. He turned the radio on. A carol streamed into the room.

Rhyme nodded toward the speaker. “Aren’t we lucky there are only
twelve
days of Christmas? Can you imagine how interminable that song would be if there were twenty?” He sang, “Twenty muggers mugging, nineteen burglars burgling . . .”

Thom sighed and said to Sachs, “All I want for Christmas is a nice, complicated jewelry heist right about now—something to pacify him.”

“Eighteen aides complaining,” Rhyme continued the song. He added, “See, Thom, I
am
in the holiday spirit. Despite what you think.”